Case Number 05774

Asylum Of The Damned

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All Rise...

Judge David Johnson thinks asylums, and the damned, get a bad name thanks to movies like these.

The Charge

Everyone pays for their sins.

Opening Statement

Who would have thought an infamous insane asylum in the middle of nowhere,
shrouded by darkness and run by a bizarre doctor who talks in a creepy voice,
wouldn't be all that nice a place?

Facts of the Case

Director Phil Jones wastes little time getting into the thick of it. The
opening scene finds a hapless doctor screaming and wailing and tied to an altar.
From the shadows a giant demon with blazing red eyes emerges, shoots out
lightning that looks like something I generated on my Commodore 64, and sucks
the soul out of the doc.

Time passes, and we meet James Bishop (Matt Stasi), a young psychiatrist
joining St. Andrews Asylum for the Criminally Insane to fulfill his residency.
Bishop is an idealistic doctor, determined to make a difference in the lives of
those with tortured minds. However, Dr. McCort (Bruce Payne), the enigmatic head
doctor, holds a more cynical worldview, believing that his patients are
thoroughly evil and without merit.

The tension between Bishop and his boss increases when a body turns up with
a strange burned imprint in his chest. Bishop tries to pursue the mystery, but
Dr. ________ stands as an impediment.

Joined by the crazy janitor and another patient, a giant, blind man (Tony
"Tiny" Lister), Bishop slowly—and I mean
slowly—unravels the secret behind St. Andrews, and the truth behind
a demon called The Harvester.

The Evidence

Asylum of the Damned didn't make me hate my life in the 85 minutes I
devoted to it. That's a compliment, right? For a low-budget, no-name flick, it
delivered a fairly okay story, some fun creature effects, and batch of gleeful
over (and under) acting.

The best part of the movie is The Harvester monster. Lamentably, this nifty
creature is reduced to more of a cameo, but I applaud the costume effects, and
certainly prefer it over some kind of pathetic stab at CGI.

In fact, the grunts and snarls emitted from The Harvester represented the
finest acting in the film. Matt Stasi is as wooden as a pressure-treated 2x4. On
the flipside, Payne's sinister doctor is overacted like a champ. From the smarmy
speeches and the dripping air of superiority, this guy just unloads fully into
evil doctor man.

The story itself seems little less than a super-sized Tales from the
Crypt episode, complete with a predictable ending and a really no-shock
reveal of the villains. Heck, we see the Big Bad in the first five minutes of
the movie.

Thankfully, the whole affair is short, but too much exposition shortchanges
the climax and leads to an outrageous cop-out ending that makes no sense. It
seems like something vomited out of a freshman creative writing class. In the
end, Asylum of the Damned, despite its brevity, feels much longer than it
actually is.

The movie looks nice in some places and not-so-nice in others. The dark
sequences suffer the most, as the picture gets grainy and the colors wash out.
But a 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is duly appreciated and goes a long
way toward lifting the film a few meters out of the Z-movie realm. A
surprisingly strong 5.1 Dolby Digital track accompanies and manages to squeeze
some atmosphere out of this movie.

Trailers are it for bonuses.

Closing Statement

So is this disc worth a spin? You won't be damned if you don't, but you won't
be damned if you do either.

The Verdict

The court cannot unequivocally recommend it, but there are worse fates than
Asylum of the Damned.